Behind the Badge: Week 5

Just saying – Nintendo Wii’s got nothing on F.A.T.S. 

Johns Creek Citizens Police Academy cadets were out in the field for week five’s class participation in the Fire Arms Training Simulator at Sandy Springs Gun Club and Range on Roswell Road. 

Like the Wii video game system with real-time aim-and-shoot capability on handheld controllers, the F.A.T.S. simulator put cadets smack dab in the action with an opportunity to experience real-life scenarios that officers may encounter on patrol via life-size projection screen. 

This is the same video and audio system law enforcement agencies use to train patrol officers to react to harsh and potentially deadly situations - colorful language and all in amplified volume sans live rounds and peripheral distractions. 

While the system can’t completely match real-life encounters, it sharpens reflexes and reaction times and even offers “shoot back” capability with a forward mounted air gun firing rubber pellets at the trainee. The air gun was disabled during the cadets’ scenarios. 

“Pain is a very good teacher,” JCPD Sgt. Debra Kalish remarked with a grin as she and JCPD Officer Madhusudana Meberg greeted cadets as they arrived for their 15-minute training appointments. 

Upon entering the F.A.T.S. classroom, Sandy Springs Police Officer and Crime Prevention Specialist Larry Jacobs promptly handed cadets an air-powered Glock semi-automatic handgun - as close as it gets to the real thing - and prepped them for the firing line. 

Officer Jacobs runs the F.A.T.S academy for Sandy Springs PD and Johns Creek, part of cooperative between both agencies that form the North Metro Crime Prevention Association. 

Officer Jacobs also coordinates Sandy Springs’ citizens police academy series and instructs classes on self-defense, he said.  

“We try to have fun. But we do have to be serious because we’re not supposed to let you start shooting all over the place,” Officer Jacobs joked as JCPD academy cadet Maggie Ladd took the pistol and tensely awaited the video to roll. 

Ladd, whose husband is a sergeant with the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office, is no novice to weaponry.

As Ladd’s video scenario opened with a motorcycle rider heading toward the camera in first-person view, she instinctively lined up her sights, squared her shoulders and shifted her weight equally between her hips and ankles.

A male narrator explained that you, the officer, are on patrol and just witnessed the motorcyclist run a stop sign. 

The professionally produced video jumps from a first-person view of the patrol car to a close up of a squelching back-tire spitting gravel from behind as the “officer” pursues and stops the scofflaw biker.

The scene jumps back to first-person view with the patrol car door opening along the roadside and behind the biker while he abruptly dismounts. “Just because we ride Harleys you think we’re bad asses and you gotta’ pick on us?!” the biker barked from the video screen. 
After another barrage of choice expletives, the biker then charged the patrol car where JCPD cadet Ladd squeezed off 10 rounds at the bat of an eyelash and dropped the outlaw dead in his tracks. 

“I can stay in here and do this all day!” exclaimed Ladd, lit up with adrenaline and empowered by the accuracy of her shots that were displayed on screen after the scenario closed. 

“Best lunch break ever,” Ladd added. “But it gives me an appreciation for how officers have so little time to react, to get their guns out of their holsters in a split second between life or death – either the bad guy’s life or their own.”

Other scenarios included an escaped prisoner dragnet in the country where the trainee encountered a visibly drunk old man on a farm emerging from a barn who then charged the camera with the jagged end of a broken beer bottle; a suspected Peeping Tom who jumped from his vehicle and began firing without warning; and a eye-hand reflex exercise where photo spheres pop up on the screen and the trainee must fire in timed elimination sequence the highest threat first – gun, knife, baseball bat, etc; something like a target practice rock, paper, scissors game.  

And then there was my scenario. 

Ironically, the scene was set in my hometown of Marietta in a parking lot along the quasi-industrial Church Street Extension near Kennestone Hospital. 

I knew the spot right off and was ready to put a Blue Devil "Be Somebody" beat down on a bad guy. 

The scene opened with a panicked female running toward the camera saying that an officer was having trouble detaining a suspect. 

After the female subject directed viewers to the fracas, the camera in first-person view moved forward in dizzying, sweeping and precarious movements against a brick wall as though we were running on foot. 

When the camera cleared the wall – BAM – I was face-to-face with a large male wrestling with a much smaller female Cobb County police officer. 

The perp screamed several obscenities and then in an instant swung himself behind the officer. 

He then coiled his left arm around the officer’s neck and reached his right arm over her left shoulder going straight for her gun. 

Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! 

“Money shot!” yelled Officer Jacobs on the scenario replay. 
Every shot hit the perp’s arm dead center and missed the distressed officer.

Disclaimer: I’m a concealed weapons permit holder in Georgia and was an adept marksman and two-time steel tip dart champion in Atlanta prior to a no-fault and debilitating motorcycle crash in early 2008 that caused severe nerve damage requiring surgery on my right shooting and throwing arm. So it was nice to know the old boy’s still got a few tricks left up his sleeve; at least in the simulator.

“This is exactly why we implemented the F.A.T.S training center here, to help police officers and the general public come in and train without having to handle live ammunition and stay sharp,” said Robyn Marzullo, 33, who opened Sandy Springs Gun Club And Range with her sister, Cara Workman, a little over a year ago in this sleekly appointed standalone building at Brantley Road. 

“We’ve got the live ranges. But the simulator gives people of any skill level, even those who’ve never fired a gun, a chance to handle a firearm without being intimidated by the sound and kick of a real one,” Marzullo said. “And we especially like to reach out to women to help empower them with potentially life-saving training so they don’t have to cower at the thought of being helpless against criminals breaking into their homes or stalking them on the street.” 

“This is at the heart of public and private partnerships,” Sandy Springs Officer Jacobs concluded. “That’s what we’re doing – number one, help officers and civilians who take these kinds of courses develop a sense of awareness.” 

“And number two,” Jacobs added. “To see what our officers can possibly face out there and what it’s like to have a split second if that to react accordingly. You can never have too much training.”